Can Capitalism Survive?

By Benjamin A. Rogge

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One of the signs of advancing age in the American college professor is a tendency for him to write less and publish more. This seeming paradox is easily explained by the phenomenon ofCollected Works, that is, by what on television would be described as reruns. As in television, no great public outcry is needed to bring forth the reruns; a question from his wife, a polite suggestion from a colleague, and the cut-and-paste operation is under way.I have put together here what I believe to be the best of the rather meager output of my professional career up to this point. For reasons (mostly financial) that always seemed adequate at the moment, I have been more of a speechmaker than a writer. Thus, you will find that many of the pieces in this collection are but speeches put down on paper…. [From the Foreword]

Foreword

One of the signs of advancing age in the American college professor is a tendency for him to write less and publish more. This seeming paradox is easily explained by the phenomenon ofCollected Works, that is, by what on television would be described as reruns. As in television, no great public outcry is needed to bring forth the reruns; a question from his wife, a polite suggestion from a colleague, and the cut-and-paste operation is under way.I have put together here what I believe to be the best of the rather meager output of my professional career up to this point. For reasons (mostly financial) that always seemed adequate at the moment, I have been more of a speechmaker than a writer. Thus, you will find that many of the pieces in this collection are but speeches put down on paper.I have edited the manuscripts, but only to make them more readable and to reduce duplication of ideas and phrasings. In most cases, I successfully resisted the temptation to erase those statements that, in the light of later knowledge, would cast doubt on my omniscience (for example, some moderate words in praise of Richard Nixon, written in May 1971). The papers are grouped in categories that make sense to me, but obviously some of the papers could as easily have been placed in other groupings.Some of those holding the markers for my intellectual debts are identified in the papers; others, just literally too numerous to mention, will have to be content with an occasional and probably very accurate, “But of course I said that long ago—and more elegantly.”Very explicit words of appreciation need be directed to Catherine Fertig, my secretary and an expert at deciphering handwritten manuscripts; to Marise Melson, my daughter and copyeditor, who is possessed of a good sense of style in manuscripts and in life; and to my late wife, Alice, for her patient, loving, and low-key nagging of me to finish this project.

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Can Capitalism Survive? Ben Rogge on Capitalism's Future

How can someone publish a book asking if capitalism can survive, offer no hope that it can, and still become widely applauded as a strong advocate of capitalism? The most obvious way is to be a world-class economist named Joseph Alois Schumpeter. The next notable way is to be Benjamin Rogge (1920-1980), not a world-class economist, but a very good economist and a world-class communicator.1 In a landmark book, Schumpeter (1975 [1942]) introduced the term "creative destruction" by way of improving...